Bitch Media - consumerismhttp://bitchmagazine.org/taxonomy/term/5471/0
enPopaganda Episode: Ladies Be Shoppinghttp://bitchmagazine.org/post/popaganda-episode-ladies-be-shopping
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<p>Women and shopping have a complicated relationship. On the one hand, there's the stereotype that all women loooove shopping—and that we throw away money on frivolous goods. On the other, there's the reality that women are the primary shoppers for <a href="http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/buying-power" target="_blank">75 percent of households</a>, despite making less money on average than men.</p>
<p>In this episode, we get four perspectives on shopping. First, we talk with <a href="http://www.kerry-cohen.com/" target="_blank">Kerry Cohen</a>, the editor of a new anthology called <em><a href="http://sealpress.com/books/spent/" target="_blank">Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship With Shopping</a></em> and hear an essay from the anthology where writer <a href="https://twitter.com/gloriaharrison" target="_blank">Gloria Harrison</a> recalls going into labor while buying a car. Then, we get financial advice from Kara Stevens, <a href="http://www.thefrugalfeminista.com/" target="_blank">"the frugal feminista."</a>&nbsp;Next up, Andi talks with author and artist <a href="http://longliveirony.com/" target="_blank">Sarah Lazarovic</a>, who spent a year drawing things instead of buying them, turning the collection into a new book called <em><a href="http://abunchofpretty.com/" target="_blank">A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy</a></em>. Finally, writer <a href="https://twitter.com/NatalieBakerrr" target="_blank">Natalie Baker</a> explores the good and bad sides of the recent trend in girl-power marketing.&nbsp;</p>
<p>FULL SHOW:&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173570762&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true"></iframe></p>
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<p>INTERVIEW WITH KERRY COHEN AND EXCERPT FROM <em>SPENT</em>.&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173569024&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false"></iframe></p>
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<p>THE FRUGAL FEMINISTA</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173568296&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false"></iframe></p>
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<p>INTERVIEW WITH SARAH LAZAROVIC</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173568564&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false"></iframe></p>
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<p>GIRL-POWER ADVERTISING</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173568810&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false"></iframe></p>
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http://bitchmagazine.org/post/popaganda-episode-ladies-be-shopping#commentsadvertisingbooksconsumerismmoneyshoppingFeminist PodcastFri, 24 Oct 2014 01:23:56 +0000Sarah Mirk28559 at http://bitchmagazine.orgPopaganda Episode: Subverting the Holidayshttp://bitchmagazine.org/post/popaganda-episode-subverting-the-holidays
<p><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8134/8701376773_54a627ac5f_o.jpg" alt="POPAGANDA logo" width="500" height="91" /></p>
<p>There's no escaping the holidays. Our only hope is to make 'em our own. This episode tells four tales of subverting the holidays.</p>
<p>First, we talk with author <a href="http://fallsapart.com/" target="_blank">Sherman Alexie</a> about his take on Thanksgiving. Then, we get advice from the folks behind <a href="https://www.adbusters.org/" target="_blank">Adbusters</a> and the <a href="http://storyofstuff.org/" target="_blank">Story of Stuff project</a> on celebrating the season without getting caught up in consumerism. From there, we talk with a <a href="http://portobellopdx.com/" target="_blank">vegan chef</a> who is transforming America's most meat-centric holiday, Thanksgiving, into a vegetable feast. To round it all out, <em>Bitch</em> editorial and creative director Andi Zeisler reads an essay about Jewish Christmas.&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="400" height="360" src="//www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?feed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2FBitchMedia%2Fpopaganda-subverting-the-holidays%2F&amp;mini=&amp;stylecolor=&amp;hide_artwork=&amp;embed_type=widget_standard&amp;embed_uuid=6a6c506e-77be-45d9-995a-7c072b53ff80&amp;hide_tracklist=&amp;hide_cover=&amp;autoplay=" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />
<div style="clear:both; height:3px; width:392px;"></div>
</p><p style="display:block; font-size:12px; font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin:0; padding: 3px 4px; color:#02a0c7; width:392px;"><a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/BitchMedia/popaganda-subverting-the-holidays/?utm_source=widget&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;utm_campaign=base_links&amp;utm_term=resource_link" target="_blank" style="color:#02a0c7; font-weight:bold;">Popaganda: Subverting the Holidays</a><span> by </span><a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/BitchMedia/?utm_source=widget&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;utm_campaign=base_links&amp;utm_term=profile_link" target="_blank" style="color:#02a0c7; font-weight:bold;">Bitch Media</a><span> on </span><a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/?utm_source=widget&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;utm_campaign=base_links&amp;utm_term=homepage_link" target="_blank" style="color:#02a0c7; font-weight:bold;"> Mixcloud</a></p>
<div style="clear:both; height:3px;"></div>
<p>This episode of Popaganda is sponsored by&nbsp;<a href="http://gladrags.com/category/28/GladRags-Cloth-Pads.html/?utm_source=bitchmagazine.com&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=bword_gladrags" target="_blank">Glad Rags</a>—get&nbsp;<a href="http://gladrags.com/category/28/GladRags-Cloth-Pads.html/?utm_source=bitchmagazine.com&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=bword_gladrags" target="_blank">15 percent off your order at GladRags</a>&nbsp;when you shop through Bitch.</p>
<p>SHERMAN ALEXIE ON THANKSGIVING&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/121417579"></iframe></p>
<p>COMBATING HOLIDAY CONSUMERISM WITH ADBUSTERS AND STORY OF STUFF&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/121416566"></iframe></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>VEGAN THANKSGIVING&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/121420037"></iframe></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH CHRISTMAS&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/121414909"></iframe></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Thank you to Cyrus W. Smith for digging up the weird Christmas music used throughout this show. "Shut Your Pie Hole" cross-stitch is courtesy of <a href="http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/" target="_blank">Subversive Cross Stitch</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This show was generous transcribed for free by <a href="http://www.rev.com/transcription">transcription service Rev.com.&nbsp;</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>TRANSCRIPT</p>: <BLOCKQUOTE>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is Sarah Mirk of Bitch Media and this is Popaganda, feminist response to pop culture podcast.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The holidays are coming.&nbsp; There's no chance of escape.&nbsp; You can't beat time.&nbsp; The calendar page will turn, and suddenly there will be Christmas decorations on every corner and voicemails about Thanksgiving plans to return.&nbsp; Your best shot at enjoying the holidays is to make them your own, to take the major days we celebrate as a culture and in some way change the ritual or the narrative to be something that feels good to you.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This episode tells four tales of subverting the holidays.&nbsp; First, I talked with author Sherman Alexie about his take on Thanksgiving.&nbsp; Then we get advice from the folks behind Adbusters and the Story of Stuff project about celebrating the season without getting caught up in consumerism.&nbsp; From there, we talked with two people who are transforming America's most meat-centric holiday, Thanksgiving, into a vegan feast.&nbsp; To round it all out, Bitch editorial and creative director Andi Zeisler reads an essay about Jewish Christmas.&nbsp; Stay tuned.</p>
<p>[musical break]</p>
<p>SHERMAN ALEXIE ON THANKSGIVING</p>
<p>Sarah: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How great would it be to share a dinner table with Sherman Alexie? The National Book Award winner, Spokane Coeur d'Alene Indian, and author of 24 books always has something smart to say, and his way of saying it is with a good-natured dark humor that illuminates the bad stuff of life with a warm and loving light.&nbsp; A week before Thanksgiving, Sherman and I talked about the holiday and how he's made it his own, imagining the traditional Thanksgiving feast as a celebration of survival.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Why don’t you like to go home for the holidays?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Well, mine is fine, but I have so many friends who go home and then they're just miserable until February, and I don’t understand why people want to go back into that.&nbsp; Everybody knows our house is the place to go when you finally decide you don’t need to be miserable.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Are you personally miserable when you go back home to your family?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; No, no, I just enjoyed having created a new holiday.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Who comes over, and what is it like?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It's random.&nbsp; It's random every year.&nbsp; Generally speaking, it has been a brother-in-law or two in between relationships.&nbsp; It has been friends, recently divorced friends, friends on their way to divorce.&nbsp; It' has been abandoned Jesuits and abandoned lesbians.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sounds like they're maybe a tragic collection of people.</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yeah.&nbsp; I remember one Thanksgiving with this very sad dude I never saw again.&nbsp; He was a friend of a friend who picked up my kid's xylophone and was playing it well and playing it sadly.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ah, the sad xylophone of Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yeah, the sad xylophone of Thanksgiving.&nbsp; He had a sad goatee, so if you looked at him, if you squinted your eyes, he looked like a pilgrim.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How do you think it changes Thanksgiving to having been with your friends rather than your family?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; You choose.&nbsp; It's always better to choose.&nbsp; I spoke at a college recently and I had talked about this, about not going home, about the difficulties of your birth families.&nbsp; Very interesting, a young gay man said that he felt liberated as soon as he knew he didn’t have to go home, back to disapproving family members.&nbsp; Another young woman cried because she said even though she felt like she didn’t belong or was accepted, she was going to still keep trying.&nbsp; We've been told, it's part of that family mythology.&nbsp; We want to believe that myth of the American family.&nbsp; The way in which we measure our love affair is by romantic comedy.&nbsp; I think we measure our holidays by Christmas movies.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What do you remember about Thanksgiving growing up?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Pretty random.&nbsp; We are poor, so we didn’t even always have food, feasting food.&nbsp; Depending on my father's … my father might not be either because he was an alcoholic binge.&nbsp; Randomly we’d have various people show up.&nbsp; We have our family house packed then too, so random Indians would show up.&nbsp; I remember one year, a couple of political prisoners who were thrown into a Spokane jail for illegal salmon fishing, knocked on the door and said that the guards had let them out and said go to the residents, find someone you can have Thanksgiving with.&nbsp; It was an awesome name for Thanksgiving.&nbsp; It was David Sohappy, S-O-H-A-P-P-Y, Junior and Senior.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Wow.&nbsp; What was it like eating dinner with them?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They're pretty quiet.&nbsp; They didn’t know us, but it's pretty funny that one group of Indians was helping out another group of Indians on Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When you were growing up and now too, what did you think of a whole Thanksgiving story about native people helping out Pilgrims?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I wish we had a tougher immigration policy.&nbsp; It's a love story, and it's still a love story.&nbsp; We still love you even, if we really are your battered spouse.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Do you still tell the story of Thanksgiving and think about the Pilgrims and the Indians having a meal together?&nbsp; Or has it become else entirely for you?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think it's become that again for us in a lot of ways, the Indians helping out sad white people.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Because the sad white people are the ones who show up who are the brother-in-laws and the abandoned lesbians.</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yeah, and then the thing is, I have a lot of power and privilege in my life now, and the solid marriage and kids.&nbsp; I am like the Indians living … I feel like I've been living well for 15,000 years now, and then all these poor explorers are showing up.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That’s a funny way to think of it.</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My family, my wife and sons and I, we've made a very stable, safe home.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Do you feel like you've been able to make Thanksgiving your own?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Yeah.&nbsp; It's interesting.&nbsp; I'm sitting here waiting for my son, on the bus.&nbsp; He has his bus route.&nbsp; He's made the city's smaller for himself. He has reinvented the city for his 16-year-old self that he didn’t do when he was 14, and much in the same way you take the holiday and make it yours.&nbsp; That doesn’t strip it of its original meaning or its context.&nbsp; There's still the really sad holiday as well.&nbsp; It is a holiday that commemorates the beginning of the end for us, the death of a culture.&nbsp; I guess you could say Thanksgiving is also about survival, look how strong we are.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When do you think about that on Thanksgiving?&nbsp; When do you think about survival?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When I'm talking about it, during the day.&nbsp; There's a lot of jokes leading up to those days.&nbsp; I'm sure I'll invite white friends over and tell them that we randomly choose one white person to eat, the one with the best marbling, which is a good thing that we choose a white person because if it was everyone, it would probably be me.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; You've gone soft.&nbsp; Was Thanksgiving sad for you growing up, or was it a good time?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Really there was always a time for dark comedy.&nbsp; Thanksgiving for Indians is like a Mel Brooks movie directed by David Lynch.</p>
<p>[laughter]</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Maybe you should write that movie.&nbsp; What do you think would happen in that movie?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I’ve always thought, I've considered writing a giant western farce, Old West farce, <em>Blazing Saddles</em> from the point of view of an Indian boy.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What would happen if you and David Lynch and Mel Brooks all told the story of Thanksgiving?</p>
<p>[laughter]</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think art would be done, it would be over.&nbsp; There'll be nowhere to go after that.&nbsp; That’s an amazing … I can't even begin to think about that.&nbsp; It would star Isabella Rossellini as Sacagawea.</p>
<p>[laughter]</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That would be really good.&nbsp; What kind of jokes would you grow up telling about Thanksgiving?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The same stuff I'm saying now.&nbsp; My parents, in whatever state they may have been in, were as funny as me. It comes from them.&nbsp; And that cranberry sauce better be canned, that’s always the case.&nbsp; There is some fundamentalism involved as well.&nbsp; People are telling me how amazing their home-made cranberry sauce is, I don’t care.&nbsp; I want nothing to do with your home-made cranberry sauce.&nbsp; I want my can.&nbsp; I want to be safe like the can.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; How do you talk to your kids about the Thanksgiving story?</p>
<p>Sherman:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; You just tell them the truth, the long historical nature of it.&nbsp; They're quite aware of what happened to us, the genocide and the way in which we survive and the way in which my wife and I have survived our individual Indian autobiographies.&nbsp; I guess it's trash talking, "Look, you tried to kill us all and you couldn't."&nbsp; We're still here, waving the turkey leg in the face of evil.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>[musical break]</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sherman Alexie's newest book, <em>Blasphemy</em>, is a collection of 15 short stories.&nbsp; It's really good.&nbsp; You should go read it.</p>
<p>[musical break]</p>
<p>ADBUSTERS AND STORY OF STUFF</p>
<p>Sarah: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Here's a heart-warming headline from the <em>Cleveland Plain Dealer</em>: “WalMart, giving one million employees who work on Thanksgiving extra pay, a turkey dinner, and 25% off a future purchase.”&nbsp; Yes, WalMart will be opening at 6am on Thanksgiving and its one million workers will have to spend the holiday shelving toasters instead of spending time with their families, but at least they will get to screen a discount on a future Walmart purchase.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a commercial bonanza in America, as retailers big and small rush to push us to buy, buy, buy to celebrate the holidays.&nbsp; This consumerist spectacle has its critics, of course.&nbsp; Over 20 years ago, the people behind anti-consumerist media group Adbusters started up a holiday of their own, Buy Nothing Day.&nbsp; I talked to one of the founders of Buy Nothing Day about the annual counter-holiday.</p>
<p>Kalle:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm Kalle Lasn.&nbsp; I'm the editor-in-chief of <em>Adbusters Magazine</em>.&nbsp; Almost 25 years ago now, I was the co-founder of Adbusters Media Foundation.&nbsp; Around the early 1990s, we were having a bunch of brainstorming sessions about where we should go, and we were really down on consumer culture.&nbsp; We felt that the consumer culture was turning citizens into consumers and creating a very ecologically unsustainable situation for future generations.&nbsp; We were also sick of many of the -isms of the time, I mean, sick of feminism and environmentalism.&nbsp; Whenever we heard the word <em>-ism</em> then we sort of cringed and dreamed of a different, more provocative, more telling kind of activism, and we started calling it culture jamming.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In our brainstorming sessions, one day a local Vancouver activist, his name was Ted Dave or he is Ted Dave I should say, he walked in to our office and he said, "Yeah, I've got it.&nbsp; I've got it.&nbsp; It's Buy Nothing Day."&nbsp; Then in the next issue of <em>Adbusters</em>, we put a poster for Buy Nothing Day and started talking about it.&nbsp; Those three words, Buy Nothing Day, at that time 20 years ago, they had a magical ring to them, and this social marketing campaign took off like … actually it surprised us how quickly it spread to first of all throughout the Pacific Northwest region and then the year after that it was already all over North America and creeping into Australia and the UK.&nbsp; Within a few years, Buy Nothing Day was celebrated in 65 countries around the world.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What surprised us, even in the early days of Buy Nothing Day is that somewhere in Australia or London, England, people would suddenly say, “Sure, we got to have our Buy Nothing Day,” and they would sometimes change it.&nbsp; They would call it No Shopping Day and then create their own activism around it.&nbsp; After a while, the day had a momentum of its own that was almost independent from what we were doing.&nbsp; Nonetheless, every year we try to stay in touch with all the groups that are still doing it, and we also try to push it into the next phase, it felt like doing a Buy Nothing Day for one day somehow wasn’t enough.&nbsp; For the last few years, we've been talking about the Buy Nothing Christmas.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Last year, in one of our brainstorming sessions, some people were saying that we should, on top of Buy Nothing Day, we should have Do Nothing Day, a day that’s somehow even bigger than Buy Nothing Day.&nbsp; It's a day where we look at this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth and wake up to the fact that we’ve become a kind of doomsday machine entering into some sort of a thousand-year Dark Age, and we have to do something.&nbsp; A really good way to begin is to just to take one day off, a Do Nothing Day, and just meditate on how you're going to live your life from now on.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Everybody makes a beautiful thing about Buy Nothing Day and some other really successful meta-memes like that, like Earth Day and some other days and weeks.&nbsp; Everybody creates their own meaning.&nbsp; Some people think it's a celebration, some people think it's a provocation, an activist … an opportunity to be an activist, but by-and-large it's a very personal, make a pact with yourself and see what it feels like not to buy anything for 24 hours.&nbsp; I think a lot of people … we remember a time when Christmas still meant something.&nbsp; It was a profound … for some people almost a spiritual season when family got together and cooked together and ate together and ate stuff together.&nbsp; Some of the best memories of my life all happened when I was 9, 10 years old and in my early teens celebrating Christmas with my family.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That, of course, we've lost that now.&nbsp; That’s been hijacked by the commercial forces.&nbsp; I must admit, I really like this idea of a Do Nothing Day, this day when you say, “Well, I don’t know what's going to happen on Do Nothing Day.&nbsp; I'm just going to just disengage for 24 hours and just see what happens.”&nbsp; On that day, suddenly on a whim you may decide to phone up a friend and go for a hike with your friend, or you may just decide that you want to just think about your life and putter around in a garden.&nbsp; God knows, but this idea that you blank your mind out, and on that day you try to live in a way that you haven't lived for a while.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On Thanksgiving Day, make a little pact with yourself, and say that “On Black Friday, I'm not going to do what everybody else is doing, dashing off to the malls and getting involved in this consumer fest, but I'm going to do something totally different, and I'll decide on that morning what I'm going to do.”&nbsp; Then go and just play jazz, a spontaneous day that will really do something.</p>
<p>[musical break]</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Like Adbusters, anti-consumerist media project The Story of Stuff, encourages people to celebrate holidays in their own way.&nbsp; The group makes little videos about all the energy and materials that go into making consumer products and how the world would be better off if we didn’t feel the need to go out and buy new piles of stuff every year.</p>
<p>Announcer:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is a story about a world obsessed with stuff.&nbsp; It's a story about a system in crisis.&nbsp; We're trashing the planet, we're trashing each other, and we're not even having fun.&nbsp; The good thing is that when we start to understand the system, we start to see lots of places to step in and turn these problems into solutions.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I talked with Story of Stuff community outreach director, Allison Cook, about how she celebrates the holidays without being consumed by consumerism.</p>
<p>Allison:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Story of Stuff, we make short cartoons about where your stuff comes from and how it's made and its social and environmental impacts.&nbsp; We released the original Story of Stuff in 2007, right before Christmas.&nbsp; We originally thought that the movie was just for other conserving people like us.&nbsp; What became really clear is that there are a lot of people who are super-dismayed by the way that we consume endlessly, and the terrible things that that does for the planet but also the terrible things that that does for workers and for our pocketbooks and for our sense of self and for our actual physical health.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think as a kid, I definitely had in a lot of ways a pretty typical, upper-middle-class American child in relationship to Christmas is the holiday that my family celebrates, so presents were very much a big part of the holiday and the season.&nbsp; I think the things that always got me most fixated were the traditions that my family still practices with a lot of bigger panache.&nbsp; My family actually goes caroling every Christmas Eve, and so that’s always been one of my favorite parts of the holidays.&nbsp; We have like 40 or 50 people over at my parents’, crammed in my parents’ house, and then we have a big meal and then we go and sing out in the streets of Los Angeles where I grew up.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What’s your favorite carol to sing? That’s adorable.</p>
<p>Allison:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We sing all of the standards like “Feliz Navidad,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Let It Snow.”&nbsp; But at some point, we developed this very funny tradition wherein we close the night by singing Bill Withers' “Lean on Me.”&nbsp; So that’s actually my favorite one that we do, but it's not a Christmas song.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Can you sing us few bars of it?</p>
<p>Allison:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Oh, please don’t make me.&nbsp; That’s so unfair.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; [singing] Lean on me …</p>
<p>Allison:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; [singing] When you're not strong, I'll be your friend.&nbsp; I'll help you carry on …</p>
<p>[Lean on Me starts playing]</p>
<p>Allison:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Exactly.&nbsp; And then the whole break down, "You just call on me brother, when you need a hand."&nbsp; I went to an all-girls school and so we used to sing the song as “You just call on me sister.”&nbsp; That’s very silly and very delightful and one of my favorite parts of the holiday, and has nothing to do with buying anything, which is nice.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That’s interesting.&nbsp; What are other ways that you spent in celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving with an eye on consumerism?</p>
<p>Allison:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think that whenever people talk about consumerism it's important to make the distinction between consumerism and consumption.&nbsp; Consumption is totally normal, like everybody does it.&nbsp; It's good and healthy, and we should do it.&nbsp; Consumerism is totally out of whack, frenzied and frantic, pattern of consumption where it's just like a more, more, more without thinking about whether we need it or what its impacts are, et cetera, et cetera.&nbsp; It really is about that quality of time that you spend with people, I think that consistently when I look back at my memory from the things that have matter most to me in terms of my relationship to the holidays, it's about the time that gets spent.</p>
<p>So moving from Thanksgiving into Christmas, I think one of the shifts that I've made is I really try to focus on giving experiences or quality time spent together or something that doesn’t involve actual stuff when I give gifts.&nbsp; For my brother and sister, we usually give each other time that we're going to spend together, doing something that we like to do, so for my brother and I, we'll go to the flea market together, that will be our thing that we do and exchange as a gift.&nbsp; For my dad, I usually get him concert tickets to a show or a band that I like that he hasn’t heard of before.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think most people, and certainly this is not the rule, but most people have enough stuff and they could have more ugly sweaters or gift cards to stores that they don’t shop at is not really how to express your love.&nbsp; For some people there's a lot of pushback of shame or what have you or about store-bought presents and I think it really demonstrates how important it is for us to re-engineer the conversations, so that Christmas isn't just this stressful, crazed, guilt-induced, debt-ridden holiday and can actually be something more meaningful and valuable.</p>
<p>[musical break]</p>
<p>VEGAN THANKSGIVING</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the kitchen of Portobello Vegan Trattoria in Portland, the prep cooks are just whipping through mushrooms, kale, and onions they will dish up for the evening meal.&nbsp; Every night is busy at the small delicious vegan restaurant.&nbsp; But one of the biggest nights of the year is coming up fast.&nbsp; Reservations for Portobello's all-vegan Thanksgiving dinner are already sold out two weeks before the day.&nbsp; Like vegans and vegetarians all over the country, co-owner Dinae Horne takes pride in transforming the holiday that’s all about turkey into a feast that’s filled with vegetables.</p>
<p>Dinae:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm Dinae Horne.&nbsp; I'm half of the owners of Portobello Vegan Trattoria.&nbsp; I'm the general manager, and my business partner is Chef Aaron Adams.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; You guys are planning a super-elaborate vegan Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Dinae:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We do a vegan Thanksgiving dinner every year.&nbsp; I supposed it's a tradition at this point.&nbsp; Originally, we called it the Autumnal Harvest Dinner, but we've moved on to calling it Thanksgiving dinner in lieu of our guests out large calling it that as well.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Autumnal Harvest didn’t go very well of an idea?</p>
<p>Dinae:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think it just confused folks a little bit.&nbsp; We were attempting to adjust the potentially problematic nature of the holiday.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What are you dishing up for Thanksgiving?</p>
<p>Dinae:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It's a three-course menu, and there's an option for each course that’s gluten-free.&nbsp; We've got pumpkin soup, roast beet salad, seitan roast, stuffed portobello, pumpkin pie or sweet potato mousse, so traditional foods, our take on those.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That sounds super delicious.&nbsp; How do you think it changes Thanksgiving to have it be vegan?&nbsp; Clearly it's tasty, but how do you think it changes your celebration of the holiday to have it not include any meat or dairy?</p>
<p>Dinae:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The thing that I appreciate most about it is that it gives people the opportunity to bring in their family members and celebrate a holiday that is a personal tradition for their family as well, but in a way that honors their own ethics and brings that to the table in a real way.&nbsp; I think that it provides an alternative for people who maybe still really appreciate some element of traditional Thanksgiving that they get to bring to their family something that they feel good about.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Do you ever celebrate Thanksgiving with your family?&nbsp; What's it like when you go home?</p>
<p>Dinae:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I went vegetarian when I was 12, and a lot of my family, my extended family, really thought that I was just doing it to be cheeky and so they would try to argue the chicken or vegetables and things like that and wasn’t something that …&nbsp; it didn’t make the experience of the holidays any more pleasant, I'll put it that way, and originally I was eating a lot of olives and mashed potatoes.&nbsp; When I would cook at home and when I started cooking more and when I got older, I really enjoyed being able to bring something to the table as well.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Talk to me about that wording.&nbsp; Why were you guys steering clear of Thanksgiving, and why go for Autumnal Harvest?</p>
<p>Dinae:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I feel like there's a mythology surrounding a lot of American holidays that isn't necessarily true to form.&nbsp; It's not indicative of what actually occurred historically.&nbsp; A lot of people definitely have started to map their own meanings over those traditions, and I have an appreciation for that.&nbsp; I think it was an attempt on our part to do so and to recognize the kinds of meanings we'd like to map.&nbsp; But so many folks call and just want to make Thanksgiving reservation is the word that they have identified with.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thanks to Dinae, but it's time for her to get back into the kitchen to finish cooking this evening's meal.</p>
<p>[musical break]</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Most people are celebrating Thanksgiving without the backing of a commercial kitchen.&nbsp; Bitch merchandise volunteer Jennifer Busby talked with me about how she's hosting a vegan Thanksgiving dinner that remakes the holiday into something else entirely.&nbsp; She and her friends call the fancy potluck-style meal …</p>
<p>Jennifer:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thanks Living.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What's Thanks Living?&nbsp; Can you walk us through it?</p>
<p>Jennifer:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thanks Living is a vegan, decolonized version of Thanksgiving, where we don’t kill any of our small animal friends, and I just wanted to have a gathering at my house with my friends and make a community where we can hang out and drink mulled wine and eat butternut squash and talk about how the land that we are living on is stolen.&nbsp; I'm working on writing, I guess, a grace.&nbsp; People normally say grace at Thanksgiving, and it's usually religious.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think it's important to acknowledge in a secular way thankfulness for the food that we have, for all of the people and the resources that it takes to fill your table, to fill your grocery store, your farmer's market, any of those things.&nbsp; With that, I think comes an acknowledgement of labor and of human rights, and of environmentalism,&nbsp; And there’s all these different things happening at once, and I think that food in particular gives a really good window to talking about that stuff, so I think we'll just go from there.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I think that one of the things that I struggle with personally is worrying about being the best person and caring about things the most all of the time and figuring out what can I do to make sure that I'm not oppressing anyone, right now, and I think that this time of year, giving thanks, being aware of that struggle as an activist is really important.&nbsp; It's easy to get burnt out.&nbsp; I don’t want to have the saddest party in the world like I don’t want to just get together with people and be sad about how we can't fix anything.&nbsp; I think it's important to celebrate each other and celebrate our connections and celebrate all of the positive things that we are able to do.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Happy Thanks Living.</p>
<p>Jennifer:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thanks.&nbsp; Happy Thanks Living to you.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Jennifer's Thanks Living is invitation only, but you can stop by Portobello Vegan Trattoria for some celery root ravioli anytime.&nbsp; They're located on Southeast 12th and Division in Portland.</p>
<p>[musical break]</p>
<p>REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH CHRISTMAS</p>
<p>Sarah: &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I swear that Christmas starts right after Halloween.&nbsp; As soon as stores slap a discount tag on their pumpkin candy, they're setting up giant candy canes and rows of Santas.&nbsp; Bitch creative and editorial director Andi Zeisler reads this essay about her Jewish perspective on America's ever-expanding holiday.</p>
<p>Andi:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Is there such a thing as a religious holiday becoming secular?&nbsp; It's a question many of us ask on a yearly basis, now that the relentless Christmasing of the United States has brought us workplace Secret Santa exchanges, TV networks broadcasting days of films like <em>A Christmas Story</em> and <em>Jingle All the Way</em>, Pinterest board is devoted to the Elf on the Shelf, and a guarantee that wherever you go in the month of December, you'll end up hearing Mariah Carey sing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” at least twice.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As a culturally if not quite religiously Jewish person, I accept and tolerate this.&nbsp; No matter what Sarah Palin might think, very few of us in the tribe are interested in waging a war on Christmas.&nbsp; But the conventional wisdom that everybody, Christian or not, feels the so-called Christmas spirit can be othering. &nbsp;When well-meaning supermarket workers ask about your Christmas cooking plans, when Jewish children are queried by strangers about what they plan to ask Santa to bring them, it's a reminder that to not celebrate Christmas seems both radical and isolating. &nbsp;It can be even more so for Jews, whose own winter holiday, Hanukkah, has been elevated from a relatively minor one to something that’s generally hastily invoked as a measure of inclusion, an afterthought to Christmas well-wishes hastily amended.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hanukkah has become defined by its proximity to Christmas, but despite the holiday's awkward appending to America's holiday, what’s often overlooked is that Jews have a long tradition of celebrating Christmas in our own ways.&nbsp; <em>Saturday Night Live</em>'s digital video, “Christmastime for the Jews,” sums up the meaning of this hacked holiday with tongue-in-cheek bluntness.&nbsp; With a claymation style that harks back to <em>Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer</em>, the video captures the particular magic of New York City on Christmas, where the streets are alive with Jews streaming into Chinese restaurants and movie theaters celebrating the holiday with their freedom to run the streets on which they're normally outnumbered.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The people who don’t celebrate Hanukkah, that is, the majority of Christians who are in turn the majority of Americans, can be aware of Hanukkah, yet not be in any way affected by it.&nbsp; Non-Christians, on the other hand, have no choice but to acknowledge Christmas.&nbsp; Besides the unrelenting hype of the season, it's also a day when businesses and schools are closed, public transportation options shrink, big cities seem to yawn emptily, and small towns are dominated by caroling and Christmas lights.&nbsp; The most prominent of Jewish Christmas traditions, eating Chinese food on Christmas Day, became a tradition because Chinese restaurants were the only ones open on the holiday.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When I asked folks on Facebook and Twitter about the personal rituals that have grown out of being Jewish in a Christmas-centric America, I got some great responses.&nbsp; Food, not surprisingly, was central to these traditions.&nbsp; Plenty of people offered variations on the Chinese food and a movie standby, with one pal noting that her family changes up the type of Asian food each year, branching out to Korean and Thai as well as Chinese.&nbsp; But others mentioned brunches with bagels and lox and dinner at famed Jewish delis like Katz's in New York or Canter's in Los Angeles.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Volunteering was also a theme mentioned by people who responded to my query.&nbsp; One person remembered volunteering at the hospital where her mother worked as a nurse; another organizes a trip with her children to a local soup kitchen, after which they go to the movies.&nbsp; The focus on giving back isn't surprising, given Judaism's emphasis on Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world, a concept than many believe encompasses social justice and community healing.&nbsp; In many places, volunteerism is formalized.&nbsp; Cities with large Jewish populations like Boston, Los Angeles, and Detroit organize free yearly Christmas dinners for homeless, transitionally housed or otherwise underfed citizens.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As someone who is raising a child who is both Jewish and Christian, I'm not alone in trying to figure out how to honor my son's heritage at a time when more and more holidays succumb to rampant commercialization.&nbsp; For a parent, resisting Christmas is like trying to hold back the ocean with a broom.&nbsp; But acknowledging the Jewish Christmas traditions, my own and others’, to escape the holiday season is a way to manage the yearly onslaught and teach my child that subversion too can be a holiday tradition.&nbsp; When it comes with a big plate of Kong Pao chicken and the magic of two hours in the dark of a movie theater, the lesson is that much tastier.</p>
<p>Sarah:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whether you're celebrating Thanksgiving or Thanks Living, Buy Nothing Day or Black Friday, the idea of subverting the holidays is to take the customs we're told are one size fits all and to make them our own.&nbsp; Thanks so much to Sherman Alexie, Story of Stuff, Adbusters, Portland’s Portobello Vegan Trattoria, and Bitch volunteer Jennifer Busby for being part of this podcast.</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If you learned something new on this show, please share it with your friends.&nbsp; Post the link on Facebook or on Twitter.&nbsp; The show is put together by the team here at Bitch Media.&nbsp; We're a nonprofit, primarily funded by individuals, so please donate to Bitch and support feminist media.&nbsp; This show is produced at Pagatim Studios in Portland, with help from producer Alex Ward.&nbsp; Our jingle is by Mucks and Owen Wuerker.&nbsp; And you can read feminist response to pop culture every day at bitchmedia.org.</p>
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http://bitchmagazine.org/post/popaganda-episode-subverting-the-holidays#commentschristmasconsumerismNative AmericansThanksgivingveganismFeminist PodcastFri, 22 Nov 2013 21:50:32 +0000Sarah Mirk24678 at http://bitchmagazine.orgNestle's New Scam: Marketing "Electrolytenment" Water For Affluent Womenhttp://bitchmagazine.org/post/nestles-new-scam-marketing-electrolytenment-water-as-a-womens-health-trend
<p><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7327/9688520934_67ef982d17_o.jpg" alt="The project runway crew roasting marshmallows in a fancy campsite" width="440" height="299" /></p>
<p><em>From Project Runway's current season: Oh God, the glamping!</em></p>
<p>During its 12 seasons, <a href="http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/project-runway" target="_blank">Project Runway</a>, Lifetime's reality competition show with fashion designers angling to be "in," has earned its exasperatingly accurate moniker, <a href="http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/91757/#axzz2e8Cf5YFL" target="_blank">"Product Runway."</a> Product placement is part of the program, and hearing presenter Tim Gunn attempt to make a product sound relevant to a challenge is part of the spectacle.</p>
<p>Except this season, and oh especially August 22's episode, "Let's Go Glamping!" Glamping—a word that would send Samuel Johnson to the ale vat—is camping but, you know, "glamorous." (Maybe they wanted to scale down the use of "camp" with so many gay male designers around?) But fair enough, and actually a really good concept for a challenge. Except that the sponsor was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.re-sourcespringwater.com/" target="_blank">Resource Water</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Resource Water, for those who till now have been lucky enough not to know, is yet another of the Nestle <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">coven</span> brand of environmentally catastrophic ways to sucker the gullible thirsty out of their cash. It debuted earlier this year with an ad that featured what looked like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwYu6PIOKts" target="_blank">female members of Cirque du Soleil on an underwater yoga retreat</a>. What really sent eyebrows soaring was that Resource positioned itself as a "premium, high-end" still water for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/resource-nestle-premium-water-women_n_3415908.html" target="_blank">"trendy," affluent women</a>. It's actual, insufferable tagline is "Discover Electrolytenment." Those women can afford and should prefer a top-of-the-line and much more attractive reusable bottle, but Nestle wants women to drink their Kool-Aid instead, and is pushing hard to sell them on the drink-and-discard model.&nbsp;</p>
<p>As if telling women to spend money on what they don't need, for a health that will in fact be compromised, wasn't repellent enough, the chairman of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, <a href="http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/15217511-the-ultimate-in-corporate-control-nestles-chairman-wants-to-privatize-water-video">made a video</a> stating that the idea of humans having a right to water was "extreme." He continued: "Personally, I believe it's better to give a food stuff a value so that we're all aware it has its price." Rousing words from a man who's never had to walk seven miles to pump water into a pail just to survive the day.</p>
<p>It's not news that bottled water, sold in all the parts of the world where wonderfully drinkable water flows from any given tap, is the greatest marketing hoax since <a href="http://uclhistoryofmedicine.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/how-to-make-a-victorian-villain-or-the-tale-of-isaac-baker-brown-part-2-2/" target="_blank">Dr. Isaac Baker-Brown</a> determined that a clitoridectomy would cure hysteria. Annie Leonard's video, <a href="http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-bottled-water/" target="_blank">The Story of Bottled Water</a>, clearly explains why bottled water is not only unnecessary, it's wreaking economic and environmental havoc.&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/FnCnf-1-iRk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>But that doesn't stop people from pouring money into corporations' pockets, rather than turning on taps or demanding more water fountains. With the emphasis on "health" bottled water especially targets women. As brain-bendingly nonsensical and offensive as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/BIC-Retractable-Medium-Point-FHAP21-Black/dp/B005PFESMG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1377729876&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=bic+for+her" target="_blank">Bic's Pen for Her</a> is, at least you do need pens. Telling women that bottled water is better for them is the exact opposite of healthy, both in the immediate for their bodies—plastic leeches into the system—and in the long-term, because that plastic is poisoning the ocean apace.</p>
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 10px;" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3709/9685207777_bc45cc87c6_n.jpg" alt="Resource Water bottle" width="140" height="320" /></p>
<p>But Nestle has never cared who it <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/companies/nestle-nan-ha-1-gold-baby-formula-making-children-sick/story-fndfr3g3-1226445965641" target="_blank">poisons</a> and trusts that its products are so ubiquitous, and the people who rail against it are just hemp-wearing, granola-mainlining maniacs, that the profits will keep cascading in. So much so that they can afford to sponsor a season of Project Runway, with its enormous female fan base, all for the pleasure of seeing the contestants repeatedly slug down its product. One of this year's prizes is a "year's supply" of Resource Water—most people would probably be far more grateful to have their water bills paid for one year.</p>
<p>That not being enough, there was the glamping. When the contestants arrived at their wilderness grotto, replete with fairy lights, they were greeted by Tim Gunn, with Seona Skwara, Resource's "Head of Activation." (presumably Nestle hosted an "invent the job title" contest) She presented the standard patter: It's a "100% natural spring water" (which likely means it was tapped from a <a href="http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/all-bottled-up/" target="_blank">poor community's groundwater</a>). Then the message turned inspirational: Resource believes in a "sense of discovery," which it insists nature encourages.</p>
<p>No one should be surprised that Nestle would spout hypocrisy—this is the company that famously <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scandal-2012-6?op=1" target="_blank">pushed formula over breast milk in poor countries</a>. But folding in this idea of "discovery" and "nature" hides the reality of how Nestle products damage nature and bilk consumers. It is blatant greenwashing, the sort of advertising lie even Don Draper at his most cynical wouldn't stoop to. It's corporate sexism. Advertising has always told women they aren't good enough just as they are, preying on the insecurities it builds in them in the first place. Asking women to spend their hard-earned money on what they can, and should, really, really should, get for free is an insult to all the people who fought for access to clean and safe water in the first place. Never mind a calorie-free drink, it's really nifty to be cholera-free.</p>
<p>We can laugh at Nestle's ad and its chairman—<a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/427379/june-20-2013/nestle-s-natural-resource" target="_blank">Stephen Colbert did</a><strong>—</strong>and it's too late to ask Project Runway to abandon them now. But it's important to recognize that sexism in advertising isn't just about the image, it's about the product. And we can tell Nestle to insert its "high-end" water up its own end – we're going to do what's right for our bodies internally and externally, and turn on the tap.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Sarah-Jane Stratford is a freelance writer and author of two historical fiction vampire novels. You can <a href="http://twitter.com/stratfordsj" target="_blank">follow her on Twitter</a>!</em></p>
<hr />
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http://bitchmagazine.org/post/nestles-new-scam-marketing-electrolytenment-water-as-a-womens-health-trend#commentsconsumerismNestleProject Runwaywomen's healthMediaFri, 06 Sep 2013 16:50:52 +0000Sarah-Jane Stratford24029 at http://bitchmagazine.orgThe Great Gatsby's Daisy Problemhttp://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-great-gatsbys-daisy-problem
<p><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7411/8725729583_3b79c309aa_o.jpg" alt="Tom and Gatsby flanking Carrie Mulligan as Daisy" width="409" height="293" /></p>
<p>Watching Baz Luhrmann's new film <em><a href="http://thegreatgatsby.warnerbros.com/" target="_blank">The Great Gatsby</a></em> feels like chugging an entire bottle of cheap champagne: A giddy, fantastic, sugar rush quickly becomes a morose headache.</p>
<p>The film starts as a lascivious cartoon of the Jazz Age, remixing F. Scott Fitzgerald's high school literature classic with slick sensibilities and a Jay Z soundtrack that makes for a helluva good time.&nbsp; But spectacle soon fades to schlock. The film pops its cork and becomes self-serious, trying to pour its bubbly aesthetic into an epic tale of love and money and instead just going flat.</p>
<p>By the end, I wasn't touched by the story of lost love, I was trying to keep my eyes open and hoping my head from wouldn't explode the next time Leonardo di Caprio tacked "old sport" onto the end of a line. &nbsp;</p>
<p>One of the problems here is the main female character Daisy. The source material doesn't do her any favors, with Fitzgerald <a href="/post/how-the-great-gatsby-fears-the-flapper" target="_blank">both loving the glamorous image of flappers and fearing the upsetting social change they stood for</a>.&nbsp; Daisy is the linchpin of the film. Both her new-money, old-lover Jay Gatsby and her old-money, new-husband Tom Buchanan bring on tragedy by seeking to possess her, not because of who she is but who they see themselves to be reflected in her eyes. Unfortunately, both the original book and the new film are told from the male perspective, so the audience never sees more than a shallow projection of who Daisy might be. While the film is meant to be a critique of Tom and Gatsby's desperate lust for controlling Daisy, it falls into the same trap of seeing her only as an object of desire.</p>
<p>Actress Carey Mulligan plays Daisy very well and succeeds at getting a little personality in edgewise. Daisy doesn't come off as the hysterical, consumerist flapper I remember from the book, but a dull, rich, beautiful woman who has been taught to hold her tongue. We first see her in the film from the perspective of her cousin, narrator Nick Carraway, who comes upon her in a grand room swirling with white silks, lounging and giggling on a sofa. He describes her as a woman who makes a man feel like the best person in the world when she looks at him—and that's the primary role she's assigned for the remainder of the script. Mulligan sneaks in some sass, though.&nbsp; When Tom soon spouts off a pseudo-scientific racist remark, Daisy responds, "Tom's very profound lately. He reads deep books with long words in them."</p>
<p>Later, staring out at the day with Nick, Daisy utters the famous line, "That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." Daisy seems to run deeper than the men around her give her credit for—she's playing the fool, but the film never gives the audience the chance to see she isn't one.&nbsp; Instead, she occupies an accessory position in a film that resembles Gatsby's own "huge, incoherent house."</p>
<p>The other problem with the film is that it seems to entirely miss the book's criticism of consumerism. Though the early scene of a drunken sex party in sweltering New York is so outrageous that it becomes grotesque (screeching women! Feathers everywhere! A guy with a trumpet who won't shut up!) the film is <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/great-gatsby-movie-promotions-and-parties-capture-glamorous-1920s-new-york-lifestyle_b63547" target="_blank">prominently sponsored by Brooks Brothers, &nbsp;Tiffany's, and Prada</a>. Narrator Nick Carraway winds up in rehab for alcoholism, an irony that seems lost on film sponsor Moet &amp; Chandon. But besides that end of Nick, the film does nothing to beat against the current. There's no lesson that all this 1920s extravagance is problematic. The message is to party like a rock star and dress like a robber baron—just don't waste all your money chasing a woman who waffles.</p>
<p>The audience, too, is better off spending its ticket money on a quality drink. &nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="/blogs/movies" target="_blank">Read more Bitch film coverage!</a></p>
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-great-gatsbys-daisy-problem#commentscarey mulliganconsumerismMoviesFri, 10 May 2013 18:05:32 +0000Sarah Mirk22541 at http://bitchmagazine.orgThe Long Goodbye: Giving, Giving… Gone!http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-long-goodbye%E2%80%A6giving-giving-giving%E2%80%A6gone
<p><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5206/5283164967_aff7c78e5f_o.jpg" alt="Oprah&#039;s Favorite Things" align="left" height="220" hspace="10" width="285" /></p>
<p>Oprah recently unveiled her <a href="http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprahs-Ultimate-Favorite-Things-2010" rel="nofollow">Ultimate (and ultimately final) Favorite Things (UFT)</a>. &nbsp;In yesterday's <a href="/post/the-long-goodbye%E2%80%A6make-sure-an-ambulance-is-standing-by-because-it%E2%80%99s-oprah%E2%80%99s-final-%E2%80%9Cfavorite-thi" rel="nofollow">post</a>, we briefly summarized the history of this segment and the incredible revenue generation and exposure getting selected yields for a company. &nbsp;In 2008, <em>The Oprah Winfrey Show</em> toned down this segment in response to the sharp economic downturn. In 2009, the segment was canceled all together, presumably for the same reason (though the producers weren't explicit). This year, economic woes were forgotten as audience members received a haul worth nearly $47,000. Cue to shots of <a href="http://jezebel.com/5694717/everyone-loses-their-shit-over-oprahs-final-favorite-things" rel="nofollow">recipients losing it</a>.
</p>
<p>
There are several things at play here.
</p>
<p>
<strong>1. Giving is <em>fun</em></strong>. And no one is having more fun giving than Oprah. She wildly gesticulates, she enthusiastically sing-talks (it's yoooooooouuuuuur favorite thiiiiiinnnngsss!) and she interacts with the audience in a way that makes you feel like you're at a party. &nbsp;A party where you get a bunch of dazzling free stuff. </p>
<p>
<strong>2. But the message is supposedly about&nbsp;<em>giving back</em>.</strong> There were two episodes devoted to UFT this year and in both, Oprah tricks the audience into thinking it's about giving back. She relays that audience members were people who were nominated and selected as "hometown heroes"–those who have made a difference in their communities. But instead of giving to the causes or organizations that audience members supported, she gives <em>stuff</em> to the people who were active in their support. Is there anything wrong with this? Absolutely not. But does the message of "giving back" get lost? Absolutely yes.
</p>
<p><strong>3. This feeds into our entitlement culture.</strong> There is no shortage of research or philosophical pondering about the pervasive sense of entitlement in American culture, and Oprah contributes to this. When she received the Kennedy Center Honor earlier this month, she was asked <a href="http://tinyurl.com/29qbzzj" rel="nofollow">what it meant to her.</a> &nbsp;"It means that all of the hours and all of the sacrifice and all of the lack of balance and all of the giving, giving, giving, giving to other people and not taking time for yourself actually paid off because some people were actually paying attention." Certainly recognition is important, but has Oprah really suffered from lack of recognition? I'm not even sure if Oprah is conscious of this, but she puts that <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7123679n" rel="nofollow">"I </a><em><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7123679n" rel="nofollow">deserve</a></em><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7123679n" rel="nofollow"> this"</a>&nbsp;(starts at 1:07) message out there and it feeds into our own feelings of entitlement, as does the Favorite Things series. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.weau.com/news/headlines/109982439.html" rel="nofollow">local Wisconsin news station</a> caught up with an UFT audience member and interviewed her on the phone. She said, "I'm so thankful and grateful for what God put me on this earth for, is to help the elderly to help anybody, and for, give it to God because <strong>I have been repaid this week." &nbsp;</strong>Again, there's nothing wrong with recognizing people who do good, but the message here is that giving back should be rewarded with, or even <em>replaced with</em>, material gain. &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>4. Still, there is giving going on.</strong> While the vast majority of Oprah's Favorite Things have been consumer products big and small, she has done much to promote giving. One example is through&nbsp;<a href="http://www.kiva.org/" rel="nofollow">Kiva</a>, is a micro-financing organization that links donors with micro entrepreneurs in developing countries. Nearly since its inception, Oprah has promoted the organization and this year named Kiva as one of her Favorite Things. As a result, donations have spiked considerably. <em><strong>We'll focus fully on Oprah's philanthropic pursuits in tomorrow's post. </strong></em></p>
<p>Oprah ends the final UFT by asking, "Has this been a wild ride?" It sure has, but you know what would have made it even wilder? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XcT49ms4yg" rel="nofollow">Bees!</a>&nbsp;</p>
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-long-goodbye%E2%80%A6giving-giving-giving%E2%80%A6gone#commentsconsumerismentitlementFavorite ThingsgivingmaterialismOprahphilanthropySocial CommentaryWed, 22 Dec 2010 19:32:02 +0000JDTress7278 at http://bitchmagazine.orgThe Long Goodbye: Call the Ambulance, Because it’s Oprah’s Final “Favorite Things!”http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-long-goodbye%E2%80%A6make-sure-an-ambulance-is-standing-by-because-it%E2%80%99s-oprah%E2%80%99s-final-%E2%80%9Cfavorite-thi
<p>In mid November, Oprah kicked off the final episodes of her "Favorite Things" series by tricking the audience into thinking the show would be focused on "giving back." Standing on the stage in a long, black dress paired with a mustard-colored belt, she says:</p>
<p>"Today our audience is filled with ultimate viewers and people who have given back in some way…I believe giving is one of the most important things you can do, and one of the best ways you can prepare for giving is meditation…I will say that…when you mediate, it allows you to clear a channel for giving to others. So how about we meditate on this…"</p>
<p>Then Christmas music fills the air, Oprah rips her dress off revealing a sparkly red number underneath and begins bellowing, "it's our favorite things! Oh yeah! Oh yeah!" Cut to the audience going <a href="http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprah-Surprises-Her-Ultimate-Favorite-Things-Audience-Video" rel="nofollow">apeshit</a> while fake snow falls on them. One woman mouths: "I'm going to drop dead."</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/u34482/oprahs-favorite-things-2010.jpg" width="424" height="325" /></p>
<p><em>The Oprah Winfrey Show</em> launched its Favorite Things Series in 2002 and the impact on the companies highlighted was immediate and incredibly profitable. <em><a href="http://www.inc.com/articles/2009/08/oprah.html" rel="nofollow">Inc. Magazine</a></em> interviewed several company heads about the "Oprah Effect"—particularly in relation to a product being selected as a "Favorite Thing"—and the translation into instant revenue is staggering: up to 1,000% growth over the short-term immediately following the episode and sustained higher revenues for months or years afterward. Getting that coveted slot also presents an opportunity to market a product using the Oprah brand. &nbsp;</p>
<p>And the Oprah Effect extends to people as well as products. She's responsible for turbo-charging or redefining the careers of several individuals: Dr. Phil, Suze Orman, Rachel Ray and Barack Obama to name a few. <a href="http://econweb.umd.edu/~garthwaite/celebrityendorsements_garthwaitemoore.pdf" rel="nofollow">Two economists from the University of Maryland</a> were able to determine that Oprah's endorsement of Obama translated into over one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primary. No doubt…the woman has influence.</p>
<p>In late 2008, she used that influence to temper the "shop, shop, shop" message into one that matched the swift economic downturn. That year's Favorite Things episode became<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/24/oprahs-favorite-things-sh_n_369609.html " rel="nofollow"> "How to Have the Thriftiest Holiday Ever!"</a> (described as Oprah's Favorite Things…with a twist!), where each piece presented was either inexpensive or homemade. &nbsp;In <a href="http://blogs.bet.com/entertainment/staytuned/no-favorite-things-for-oprah/" rel="nofollow">2009</a>, the show was canceled altogether, presumably because the economy hadn't improved though the show's producers weren't explicit. &nbsp;In 2010, things haven't improved significantly, but Oprah's on her way out and she is going out with a BANG! &nbsp;This year is the <strong><a href="http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprahs-Ultimate-Favorite-Things-2010" rel="nofollow">ULTIMATE</a></strong><a href="http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprahs-Ultimate-Favorite-Things-2010" rel="nofollow"> Favorite Things</a> year and the gift packages given to audience members rounds out at nearly $47,000 and includes the redesigned Volkswagen Beetle and a Caribbean cruise. </p>
<p>I'd like to think that I'd turn around and re-gift that haul to charities, but I don't know. I'd probably keep the iPad. And the <a href="http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprahs-Ultimate-Favorite-Things-2010/24" rel="nofollow">Mac &amp; cheese. </a></p>
<p><em><strong>Next up this week…more Ultimate Favorite Things audience freak outs and the fine line between giving back and giving in... to consumerism.</strong></em></p>
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-long-goodbye%E2%80%A6make-sure-an-ambulance-is-standing-by-because-it%E2%80%99s-oprah%E2%80%99s-final-%E2%80%9Cfavorite-thi#commentsconsumerismFavorite ThingsOprahphilanthropySocial CommentaryTue, 21 Dec 2010 20:32:32 +0000JDTress7268 at http://bitchmagazine.orgThe Long Goodbye: What's Class Got to Do With It?http://bitchmagazine.org/post/oprahs-defining-moments
<p><img alt="2025741530055458050UrJlQP_ph.jpg" src="/sites/default/files/u34482/2025741530055458050UrJlQP_ph.jpg" height="480" width="640"></p><p>From time to time throughout this series, I will revisit some of Oprah's past moments and the impact they had on pop culture.</p><p>Let me set the scene…Paris, June…you're walking with your friends, shopping and enjoying life...across the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré you spot Hermes. And you think:&nbsp;<em>this moment would be even better if I had a $4,000 purse to go with it! &nbsp;</em>Or maybe you'd be perfectly content with a fresh baguette and some fromage…</p><p>On June 14, 2005 this much occurred: Oprah arrived with friends at the Paris Hermes store 15 minutes after they closed. The store was preparing for a private public relations event and the guard and clerk on duty refused her group entry. Robin Givhan does a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062302086.html">nice job</a>&nbsp;of covering the "event" and how facts—Oprah was not allowed into the store—were mixed with perception and conjecture—Oprah, who was not in full makeup and therefore not recognizable as a celebrity, was not allowed into the store because she's black—much of it&nbsp;fueled by the interwebs but also by Oprah's inner circle.&nbsp;</p><p>"People were in the store and they were shopping. Oprah was at the door and she was not allowed into the store," Gayle King, who witnessed the incident, <a href="http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/8331665/ns/today-entertainment/">told</a> <i>Entertainment Tonight.&nbsp;</i>"Oprah describes it herself as 'one of the most humiliating moments of her life."'</p><p>During that time, a spokeswoman for Harpo Productions also conveyed to The Associated Press Winfrey's plans to discuss her&nbsp;<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679/">"Crash"&nbsp;</a>moment, as she came to refer to the Hermes incident, during the 2005 season.</p><p>This event really appeared to run away from both Oprah and Hermes; it became an amorphous blend of pop culture gossip and the ugly reality of global (as well as local) racism.&nbsp; Givhan does a nice job unearthing some of the most believable (and a few unbelievable) descriptions of the incident. In the tricky, gossip-y area that Givhan describes, it doesn't seem evident that Oprah or Gayle, or anyone else on her team, acknowledged the reality of Oprah's class position. In other words, we must analyze this important moment in pop culture (even five years later) through a lens that treats the situation as a complicated moment fraught with tensions from several different angles. We will never truly know if Oprah's experience at Hermes deserves the label of her "Crash moment," but we reserve the right to question it based on her class position, race, and, <em>particularly</em>, her status as a global icon.</p><p>Whatever this event triggered for Oprah, it became priority number one and her 2005 season premiered with a show almost entirely devoted to the incident,&nbsp;with Hermes <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/21/entertainment/main871083.shtml">represented</a> by Robert Chavez, the American chief executive officer.&nbsp;</p><p>"I would like to say we're really sorry," said Chavez. "You did meet up with one very, very rigid staff person."</p><p>"Rigid or rude?" Winfrey challenged.</p><p>"Rigid and rude, I'm sure," Chavez replied.</p><p>Oprah hugged Chavez and said to her viewers:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/detail?entry_id=889">"wear the Berkin bags. Shop, shop, shop, shop!"</a></p><p>Given the huge platform she's created, this interview presented an excellent opportunity to discuss issues of class and race in a meaningful way. Ultimately however, her final word was to "shop" at Hermes—a very expensive, exclusive global boutique. Again, Oprah leaves us with a less complicated analysis than what we deserved—particularly as her consuming public that was invited (perhaps dragged) into her personal moment where larger race, class, and gender issues should have been talked about in an intersectional way.&nbsp; Instead, race, class, and gender—as identities—were shoved into a (designer!) bag and ignored in favor of a shopping spree.</p>http://bitchmagazine.org/post/oprahs-defining-moments#commentsconsumerismegoHermesOprahshoppingSocial CommentaryFri, 10 Dec 2010 20:50:17 +0000JDTress7135 at http://bitchmagazine.orgMad World Open Thread: Which ads have *actually* compelled you to buy something?http://bitchmagazine.org/post/mad-world-open-thread-which-ads-have-actually-gotten-you-to-buy-something
<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4038/4454391477_d098ce8097.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /><br /> OK folks. We're a little busy here at Bitch HQ today getting ready for our <a href="/post/mad-world-compromising-positions">Compromising Positions Forum</a> tonight (you're coming, right?) so it seemed like the perfect time for a Mad World open forum. The prompt: Which ads have actually compelled you to buy something? Or, have you ever purchased something just because you liked the ad? <br /><br /> I'll start. Last week I was at a big box store (OK, it was Target) and I was looking for some body wash. Although several brands were cheaper, and they probably all contain roughly the same ingredients, I went with Dove Cream Oil. Why? Because I like the ad! I was taken with the Dove Cream Oil ad for a few reasons. I mean, sure, the name "cream oil" makes you think that the product will moisturize the bejeezus out of your skin, but most body washes have similar names so that wasn't really a factor here. The real reasons I like the ad are due to its spokeswoman, Whitney. Not only is she super charismatic and ridiculously cute (hey, I fall victim to cuteness just like anyone else) but she is also a chubby black woman–not the norm for beauty product spokeswomen. I couldn't embed the video for the ad, but you can watch it <a href="http://www.dove.us/#/challenge/videos.aspx">here</a>, and here's a screenshot of Whitney with her (now my) body wash:</p>
<p><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1278/4661013780_879d963c20.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><em>My charisma and non-normativity compel you!</em> Now, of course Whitney is still a young, beautiful, able-bodied woman, so it's not as if any major boundaries were broken here. Still, if I'm going to buy body wash, I'd rather support an ad I like than one I don't. If this ad featured the the more typical thin white woman I wouldn't have looked twice at it, but Whitney's presence prompted me to bust out my wallet. (Oh, and yes, I know Dove is owned by the ever-problematic <a href="http://www.unilever.com/">Unilever</a>, but I still like the ad.) This isn't the first time I've purchased something based on the ad campaign, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I guess I figure that I'm voting for quality advertising by purchasing the products (this might not be true, but I like to think it is on some level). So what I want to know is, which ads have prompted you to buy something? Have you ever purchased something you normally wouldn't have just because you thought the ad was clever/fun/interesting/unconventional? Let the open thread begin! <img src="/sites/default/files/OH_Logo.jpg" alt="OH_Logo.jpg" align="left" width="146" height="67" /> <em></em></p>
<p><em>This project was made possible in part by a grant from Oregon Humanities (OH), a statewide nonprofit organization and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds OH's grant program. </em><em>Any views, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Oregon Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities. </em></p>
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/mad-world-open-thread-which-ads-have-actually-gotten-you-to-buy-something#commentsadvertisingconsumerismMad WorldpersuasionMad WorldTue, 01 Jun 2010 19:26:23 +0000Kelsey Wallace3340 at http://bitchmagazine.orgOn the Map: Do Do-Gooder Celebs Actually Do Good?http://bitchmagazine.org/post/do-do-gooder-celebs-actually-do-good
<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2580/4013863918_7178f64faa.jpg" align="right" />It's no secret that New South Wales native Miranda Kerr, a VS angel model and Orlando Bloom's soon-to-be wifey, likes to be photographed sans clothing in order to make a rather tenuous point about environmentalism. The apparent (and cliché) connection that nude = natural = nature = save the koalas might even convince a precious few were Kerr to actually reserve her exposed flesh for the cause, but she doesn't. She takes it off for anyone who puts the right number of zeros on her paycheck, which is not to say that's inherently bad, just that it undermines the issues she purports to support. After emulating a biblical Eve-like pose while chained to a tree for the cover of <a href="http://www.greenmuze.com/celebs/green/1170-rolling-stone-goes-green.html"><i>Rolling Stones</i>' &quot;Green Issue&quot;</a> earlier this summer, Karr is now lending her naked celebrity to a newly released organic skincare line called KORA, the naming of which was reportedly influenced by Kerr's Buddhist beliefs.</p>
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&quot;Kora&quot; is a type of Tibetan Buddhist meditation that involves circumambulating a sacred site, particularly the spiritually significant places to which Buddhists make a pilgrimage specifically to perform their prayers, such as Mount Kailash in the Himalayas of Tibet and the Swayambhunath and Bodhnath stupas in Kathmandu. I've been to both stupas, and despite my cynicism about religion, I was moved while witnessed the beauty of kora carried out at the base of Bodhnath by hundreds of monks and practitioners in ad hoc synchronicity<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3521/4013098625_28f4755d3c.jpg" align="right" /> at dusk last Christmas Day. The kora happens nightly, so my being there on this Christian holiday was simply accidental, but it added to somber atmosphere as the twinkling holiday lights set the chanters aglow. While watching, my partner and I struck up a conversation with a group of monks-in-training (one of them was a woman) who had come down from the monastery to get their twice-yearly fill of such debaucherous worldly joys as cigarettes, whiskey, and beer--all the while making jokes about how they are still human, after all!
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Sometimes I think I use feminism as an excuse to hate on people, as there is a fine line between hating and critique. Alas, I am simply human too. But Kerr's involvement with KORA rubs me the wrong way. In part, it is because of the uncreative ad campaign (innovative failure is number one on my hit list these days), but I also dislike the convenient co-optation of Buddhist ritual for consumerist purposes that are at best tangentially related to the philosophy, particularly when it's done by an Aussie woman. KORA will be sold exclusively in Australian department store David Jones, a company for whom Kerr also works as a Brand Ambassador, which makes me question who stands to gain the most from this eco-friendly product launch. Certainly not the environment.</p>
<p>It seems to me that KORA is just another tired marketing ploy intended to get armchair progressives to feel better about emptying their pockets to buy things they don't actually need, and that this <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/08">pop-political, celeb-led, uncritical consumption</a> is actually more likely to negatively impact the environment than to save trees for Kerr's cuddly koalas if you believe <i><a href="http://www.storyofstuff.com/">The Story of Stuff</a></i>--which I do.
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If celebrities are going to be involved in progressive politics, I prefer their involvement be <a href="http://www.takepart.com/congowomen">meaningful and moving</a>, not trite and self-involved. What about you?</p>
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/do-do-gooder-celebs-actually-do-good#commentsbeauty productsBuddhismcelebritiesco-optationconsumerismenvironmentalismkoraMiranda KerrOrganicSocial CommentaryThu, 15 Oct 2009 08:47:07 +0000Mandy Van Deven2363 at http://bitchmagazine.orgOn the Map: Fashion and Fundraising with The Uniform Projecthttp://bitchmagazine.org/post/fashion-and-fundraising-with-the-uniform-project
<p>In Mumbai and Delhi, several fashion designers are making their radical <a href="http://sadiemagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=327&amp;Itemid=102">politics known on the runway</a>, while in the fashion capital of New York City, one Indian woman is drawing attention to the need for quality education for children who live in the slums of her homeland with one little black dress. Sheena Matheiken, founder and creative director of <a href="http://www.theuniformproject.com">The Uniform Project</a>, has come up with an interesting way to simultaneously raise money for <a href="http://www.akanksha.org/">a Mumbai-based NGO</a>, build awareness about environmentalism and consumer waste, and advocate global social awareness: &quot;wear one dress for one year as an exercise in sustainable fashion.&quot;
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The idea sprung from Matheiken's childhood in India where wearing the same clothes daily is not an uncommon occurrence for the poor and where girls and boys in uniform-mandatory public schools find a way to individualize their common threads with bangles, bindis, and sneakers. Instead of simply giving herself a creative challenge, Matheiken wanted her actions to also be meaningful to others. So, earlier this year she teamed up with her friend and designer Eliza Starbuck to creatively fashion 365 outfits out of one dress pattern using vintage, thrifted, hand-me-down, and handmade items. <a href="http://www.theuniformproject.com">The Uniform Project</a> launched in May, and is being <a href="http://theuniformproject.com/home/daily/">tracked daily</a> on the web through photographs and a detailed description of the source of every item used to compose each day's outfit. The pair are still in the process of collecting pieces to incorporate into their work-in-progress, which has <a href="http://theuniformprojectblog.com/annoucements/uniform-project-travels-to-uk-and-europe">hit the road</a> to spread its message in London this month and seeks &quot;eco-designers, wearable technologists, madminds&quot; to collaborate with on future ensembles
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Now that you've got the fashion down, you're probably wondering about fundraising. That's the simple part. The cost of sending a child to school in India for one year is $360, and The Uniform Project asks their web visitors to <a href="http://www.theuniformproject.com/home/donate.html">make a monetary donation</a> through Paypal to the Akanksha Foundation, the project's sole beneficiary. As of this writing, Matheiken and Starbuck have raised $12,456. Not bad for a project whose only PR has been viral, right? They are also planning a few events in New York and an Ebay auction will be held to sell the previously used accessories. So if you peep some cute shoes, hat, sunglasses, or jewelry when you're looking through the pictures, you might just have a chance shell out a few bucks in order to claim them as your own.
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For those who want to be a part of this artistic crafts(wo)manship, The Uniform Project is in need of accessories for layering if Matheiken is to survive the New England winter.
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http://bitchmagazine.org/post/fashion-and-fundraising-with-the-uniform-project#commentsconsumerismenvironmentalismfashionfundraisingIndiaOn the MapsustainabilityThe Uniform ProjectSocial CommentaryTue, 08 Sep 2009 10:45:05 +0000Mandy Van Deven2142 at http://bitchmagazine.org